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Week 8, 2006
THE BEST SELLERS (recent popular articles):
1) CNN/Global Office: World's longest job title revealed [Le problème des titres de poste obscurs dans les entreprises.]
2) Mother Jones: Limited ambitions [Une litanie de statistiques pour montrer comment les choses restent difficiles pour les femmes aux Etats Unis.]
3) Personal website: MORE on leasing in India [Encore plus sur le leasing en Inde]
4) The Herald: Why modern offices only let you work for 11 minutes [Encore plus sur l'étude comme quoi on ne peut travailler que 11 minutes d'affillée au bureau sans être dérangé.]

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THE REGULARS: Summary
5) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Detroit, the new super city [Situation à Détroit en vue du dernier Super Bowl.
6) Puzzle: Bistro Bottles [Un casse-tête.]
7) CNN/Business Traveler: Cellphones have the answer [La réponse à tout se trouve en appellant à partir de son téléphone portable.]
8) AUDIO/On the Media: Speech impediment [Emission radio avec transcription, cette fois-ci sur les dessins danois.]

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1) CNN/Global Office: World's longest job title revealed [Le problème des titres de poste obscurs dans les entreprises.]
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/02/10/plain.speaking/index.html

World's longest job title revealed

LONDON, England (CNN) -- If your company employs an "optical illuminator enhancer" to clean the windows, or you have a "director of first impressions" working on reception, then it might be time for some straight talking in the office. Job titles have always been dressed up or embellished to make them sound more exciting, glamorous or important than they really are.

According to a survey two years ago in the UK, seven out of 10 workers said they would prefer a grander sounding job title to a pay rise.

But soon someone working for a northern English library service will be able to claim that they have what is perhaps the world's longest job title. In an advertisement published this week, Lancashire County Council invited applications for the post of "temporary part-time libraries North-West inter-library loan business unit administration assistant."

According to the Plain English Campaign, which promotes the use of simple, understandable language, the position beats the previous record set by an advert six years ago for "part-time healthcare team foot health gain facilitators."

Not all companies take such a rigidly formal approach to titles. Ben & Jerry's, the U.S. ice cream firm, lets its staff choose their own, with the consequence that it now employs the "Grand Poobah of the Joy Gang" and the "Primal Ice Cream Therapist." And Jeff Taylor, the head of international recruitment firm Monster, prefers to be addressed formally by the title "Chief Monster."

But Plain English Campaign spokesman John Lister told CNN that opaque job titles were symptomatic of a toleration of impenetrable language in the workplace. "A problem with a lot of job titles is that people focus on where the person will fit in, rather than concentrating on what the person is actually going to be doing," said Lister. "The office is where people feel the need to concentrate more on their image and how they come across rather than getting their message across.Also within a lot of organizations you have a lot of different levels of bureaucracy and hierarchy and that makes the problem of communication worse."

English may not be the only language in which meaning occasionally gets lost in a blizzard of words. But Lister said its adoption as the international language of business made the need to make it as plain and simple as possible more important then ever. "When you have people using a second language or if you're translating material it can very easily be misinterpreted," he warned, pointing out that nuances and metaphors such as sporting analogies can often be lost, or misunderstood, in translation.

As well as being confusing, over-complicated language can also be bad for business. Korean Airlines handed a lucrative contract to build flight simulators to a French company because its employees spoke a simpler and more intelligible English than their counterparts at a British rival.

Lister said that companies could save time and money by changing their staff's approach to language. "Managers in particular can help the cause by fostering a culture where the use of words to impress rather than inform isn't rewarded," he said. "And also by putting across the point that communicating clearly is a good thing that saves time and money for the company. Start with very plain English making the point you are trying to put across and then dress it up if necessary to make it more formal or professional. Start with the point and the meaning and then move onto the words rather than the other way round."

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2) Mother Jones: Limited ambitions [Une litanie de statistiques pour montrer comment les choses restent difficiles pour les femmes aux Etats Unis.]
http://www.motherjones.com/news/exhibit/2006/01/limited_ambitions.html

Limited Ambitions: Why Women Can't Win for Trying

Clara Jeffery (editor)
January/February 2006 Issue

Women make 80¢ on the male dollar, even accounting for time off to raise kids. If that factor is not accounted for, women make 56¢.

Over her career, the average working woman loses $1.2 million to wage inequity.

Since 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was signed, the wage gap has closed by less than half a cent per year.

In 1963, RFK withdrew his nomination to a club that had spurned a black official and formed a club that didn’t admit women.

3 board members of Catalyst—a workplace-equity advocacy group—belong to Augusta National Golf Club, which bans women.

One is the CEO of GE, which won a 2004 Catalyst Award, although the company has a below-average rate of female executives.

Companies with women in top jobs see 35% higher returns than those without.

74% of female executives have a spouse who’s employed full time. 75% of male execs have a spouse who’s not employed.

42% of female execs over 40 don’t have kids.

For full-time working fathers, each child correlates to a 2.1% earnings increase. For working moms, it’s a 2.5% loss.

Every industrialized country except the U.S. and Australia has paid parental leave with a guaranteed job on return to work.

86% of guests on Sunday-morning political talk shows are men. So are 80% of the guests on The Daily Show.

Only 5 of 20-odd “thought-leader” magazines have ever had a woman as editor-in-chief. Two of those jobs were held by Tina Brown.

Only 24% of recent works in The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times Magazine were written by women, according to WomenTK.com.

1/3 of those were articles on gender or family or were short stories or memoirs.

41% of Mother Jones’ writers during the same period were women. This issue only 11% are.

Magazines that run lists of “best” firms for women to work for often accept pay-to-play advertising or use self-reported data. Working Mother lists firms facing class-action suits for sex harassment and pregnancy discrimination.

Working Mother recently found Allstate, American Express, and General Mills among the 8 best firms for women of color. At each, 30% of new hourly hires are women of color, but 0% of newly hired executives are.

Women over 65 are almost twice as likely to be poor as men.

Actresses over 40 account for 9% of movie roles. Actors over 40 account for 30%.

Anne Bancroft was 36 when she played Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Dustin Hoffman was 30.

Chances that a Best Actress winner portrayed a prostitute, a nun, or a mute: 1 in 8.

Since orchestras started requiring musicians to audition behind screens, the number of women hired has increased 20%.

40% of married professional women feel their husbands do less work around the house than they create.

Each teenage girl increases a mom’s weekly housework by 1.5 hours, but leaves a dad’s unchanged. A teenage boy adds 3 hours to mom’s chores, and an hour to dad’s.

Heavyset women get fewer promotions and face more job discrimination. Heavyset men do not.

Models weigh 23% less than average women. In 1986 it was only 8% less.

The above statistics were quoted in a press release for a Dove product whose adcampaign uses full-figured models but the use of which is claimed to reduce cellulite.

Asked to pick a partner for a relationship, college men tend to choose women in subordinate jobs. College women show no preference, nor, for a one-night stand, do men.

Men only earn 3/4 as many B.A.s as women. Some colleges now admit to practicing affirmative action for male applicants.

Only 1/3 of female Ph.D.s who get on the tenure track before having a baby ever do so.

31.5% of Iraq's parliament are women. Only 15% of the U.S. Congress are women.

15 African nations have a higher percentage of female legislators than does the U.S.

69% of men believe America would be better off if women occupied more top political jobs. Only 61% of women agree.

Among Republicans, that split is 52% to 34%.

Under Bush , the Labor Dept. has eliminated 25 publications on pay inequity and child care.

After a woman filed a sexual-harassment complaint against her Merrill Lynch superior, he circulated an article titled “Stop Whining,” which warned that “constant complaining can cost you your job.”

The British concept of hire-purchase has, however, been there in India for more than 6 decates. The first hire-purchase company is believed to be Commercial Credit Corporation, successor to Auto Supply Company. While this company was based in Madras, Motor and General Finance and Instalment Supply Company were set up in North India. These companies were set up in the 1920s and 1930s.

Development of Hire-purchase took two forms: consumer durables and automobiles.

Consumer durables hire-purchase was promoted by the dealers in the respective equipment. Thus, Singer Sewing Machine company, or Murphy radio dealers would provide instalment facilities on hire-purchase basis to the customers of their products.

The other side developed very fast - hire-purchase of commercial vehicles. The dealers in commercial vehicles as well as pure financing companies sprang up. The value of the asset being good and repossession being easy, this branch of financing activity flourished fast, although until recently, most of automobile financing business was in hands of family-owned businesses.

Leasing and Hire-purchase: A vanishing distinction:

Essentially, asset-based financing in India particularly by non-banking financial companies is split in two documentation modes - lease and hire-purchase. These two are technically different instruments, but in essence, there is not much that differs between the two, except for the caption. Click here for more on comparison between lease and hire-purchase.

In spite of the substantive similarity, historically, there has been a diametric separation between these two forms. The assets usually subject matter of hire-purchase have been different from those generally leased out. Leasing has been used mostly for plant and machinery, while hire-purchase has commonly been used for vehicles. Even the players have been different.

The reasons for this diametric distinction are more historical than logical. Hire-purchase, essentially a British form, entered India during the Colonial era, and thrived as almost the only form of external finance available for commercial vehicles. For the financiers, as witnessed World-over, commercial vehicles was the natural choice for several asset-features he loves: lasting value, ready secondary market, self-paying feature, etc. Hence, the industry of hire-purchase became synonymous with truck-financing. Besides, the motor vehicles laws gave the surest legal protection any law could give to a financier: the financier would not have to carry any of the operational risks of a motor vehicle, and yet, any transfer of the vehicle would not be possible without the financier's assent.

Leasing, essentially a US-innovation, entered the country significantly in the early 80s, and was propagated as an alternative to traditional modes of industrial finance. Besides, the early motivation (which continues with a number of players even now) of leasing was capital allowances, more significantly the investment allowance, which was not available for transport vehicles. Hence, the leasing form historically clung to industrial plant and machinery.

For several years, there was no lease of vehicles, because the Motor Vehicles law protection was not applicable to a lease, and there was no investment allowance on vehicles, and for reciprocal reasons, there was no hire-purchase of industrial machinery.

These reasons have vanished over time.

* The Motor Vehicles law now treats leases and hire-purchase at par from the viewpoint of financier-protection.
* Investment allowance has been abolished, and hence, there are no predominant tax-preferences to a lease.
* The RBI treats lease and hire-purchase at par and has stopped giving a distinctive classification to leasing and hire-purchase companies.
* The accounting norms lead to the same effect on pre-tax income, as also balance sheet values, be it a lease or hire-purchase transactions.

Therefore, income-tax and sales-tax treatment apart, there is not much that is different between lease and hire-purchase. The choice between the two is by and large open, subject to tax consequences.

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4) The Herald: Why modern offices only let you work for 11 minutes [Encore plus sur l'étude comme quoi on ne peut travailler que 11 minutes d'affillée au bureau sans être dérangé.]
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/53977-print.shtml

W hy modern offices only let you work for 11 minutes
BRIAN DONNELLY January 10 2006

It has been described as multi-tasking madness as office workers struggle to balance their normal workload with an increasing number of e-mails and other demands. New research has found that, instead of helping workers through the day, new technology can bring increased stress and disruption to busy staff. The study shows modern-day staff work for just 11 minutes before they are interrupted by an e-mail, phone call or a metaphorical tap on the shoulder from a colleague.

Researchers have calculated that interruptions consume an average of 2.1 hours of every working day, or 28% of the average person's routine. It has reached such an extent that workers are becoming locked in what was described as a mire of multi-tasking, and one expert said there had been a tenfold rise in the number of people suffering from what he called work-induced attention-deficit disorder. The two hours of lost productivity included not only unimportant interruptions and distractions, but also the recovery time associated with getting back on track.

Once people are interrupted, it takes an average of nearly half an hour to return to the original task, but some workers admit their concentration is ruined for the rest of the day.

The report, The Cost of Not Paying Attention, was written by a research team headed by Gloria Mark and Victor Gonzalez, of the University of California.
They studied a random sample of 36 office workers and found that the employees devoted an average of just 11 minutes to a project before the ping of an e-mail, the ring of the phone, or a verbal interruption from a manager or colleague pulled them in another direction.

Once they were interrupted, it took on average of 25 minutes to return to the original task, if they managed to do so at all that day. Workers in the study were juggling an average of 12 projects each, a situation one subject described as "constant, multi-tasking craziness". The five biggest causes of interruption were a colleague stopping to talk, being called away from the desk (or leaving voluntarily), arrival of new e-mail, doing another task on the computer, or a phone call.

Edward Hallowell, a leading psychiatrist, said he had seen 10 times more people in the number of patients with what he described as work-induced attention-deficit disorder than in recent years. Dr Hallowell said: "They complained that they were more irritable than they wanted to be. Their productivity was declining and they couldn't get organised." He has branded workers' compulsive use of mobiles, computers, and Blackberries as "screen-sucking".

Business leaders recognised that interruptions happen, but said they should be managed alongside regular workload. David Lonsdale, assistant director of CBI Scotland, said: "Interruptions, from within or outwith the workplace, can sometimes make it seem hard to get things done, particularly with the growth in use of new technology. "However, unexpected calls or queries do not necessarily have to disrupt the working day. Less urgent items can be done later, and those pop-up boxes and bells that signal the arrival of new e-mail can be disabled. Telephone calls can also be screened. "Constant questions from colleagues might suggest they have been given inadequate training or instruction from the outset."

Mary Czerwinski, a senior researcher at Microsoft, has been helping the computer giant design alternatives to current software products to allow workers to stay on task for longer periods, even as on-screen interruptions arrive.

In next-generation systems, interruptions are designed to be less intrusive, without flashes, pop-ups or pings. For example, e-mail alerts will appear on the periphery of a screen that is larger than today's standard, so that workers remain concentrated on their main task.

People such as Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, claims to stay focused by avoiding junk food and doing daily workouts. Although a serious multi-tasker and mobile phone fan, Ms Rice does not rely on e-mail or a hand-held computer, but carries her agenda in her head.

Donald Trump, the entrepreneur who once negotiated a book deal in 15 minutes, believes in slowing down and focusing when the office gets too frenetic. He said: "I will literally take a breath and allow things to settle a bit. I also set aside quiet time each morning and evening for reading and assessing."

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5) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Detroit, the new super city [Situation à Détroit en vue du dernier Super Bowl.]
http://teachers.scholastic.com
Detroit: The New Super City
By Lauren Gentile
Scholastic Kids Press Corps

Detroit has spent the past five years getting ready for the biggest party of them all—the Super Bowl. The city has been cleaned and polished, taking on a new shine for the Big Event, Super Bowl XL (40)! This week, thousands of people have descended on Detroi not only to witness the battle between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks but also to see the transformation of Motor City to Super City.

Detroit's Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said that the Super Bowl changed the city and it's people. "I think the best thing about the Super Bowl is that it raises the energy and spiritual renewal of Detroiters," he said. "The people who live here are so proud; their pride has gone to the next level because people around the world are going to say they had a good time at our Super Bowl."

That's a small ray of sunshine in a city that learned one of its biggest employers—the Ford Motor Co.— will be laying off 25,000-30,000 people over the next six years. Ford is also closing 17 of its manufacturing plants.

The road to the Super Bowl was not an easy one for Detroit and its Super Bowl Planning Committee.

"The biggest challenge we faced was keeping the team focused all the time between the private sector, the philanthropic organizations, and the host committee," said the Mayor. He said he hoped the results would prove the work a success.

In addition to the many parties and media events, the planning committee jampacked this week's schedule with fun for fans of all ages. For kids there's the NFL Experience, an interactive NFL-style theme park at Detroit's Cobo Hall.

The whole family can enjoy the Motown Winter Blast, a one-of-a-kind outdoor winter fair with ice skating, sledding, and even beach volleyball!

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7) CNN/Business Traveler: Cellphones have the answer [La réponse à tout se trouve en appellant à partir de son téléphone portable.]
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/01/03/mobile.phones/index.html

Cell phones have the answer: Everything you wanted to know by text but were afraid to ask

(CNN) -- Ever been stumped by a question when you're on the road? The answer could now be in the palm of your hand. Most modern executives are never far away from cyber solutions, thanks to laptops, BlackBerrys and 3G or WAP-equipped cell phones.

But sometimes technology falls short, leaving users stranded outside hi-tech network coverage. This is where a new breed of cell phone "concierge" service using trusty text message technology comes in handy. Several operators have launched in recent months, claiming they can answer any question sent by simple SMS -- the short message service supported by virtually all cell phone networks.

In the U.S., these have now begun directly targeting business travelers following a deal between car rental firm Avis and mobile information providers AskMeNow. The question-answering services claim to be able to respond to any query from "why is the sky blue?" to more complex requests about hotels, transport or directions.

Among those offering text message services is leading Internet search engine Google, which provides U.S. cell phone users with help in the shape of directory listings, movie times, stock prices and even the locations of local pizza restaurants.

In Australia, the Mojoknows service claims it will answer any question by text message within 15 minutes. In the UK, AQA (short for "any questions answered") says it can do it in six. Users pay for the service with charges on their phone bill.

AskMeNow CEO Darryl Cohen said his firm's service, retailing at 49 cents an answer and drawing responses from a call center based in the Philippines, offers an indispensable resource for executives on the move. "By providing responses to virtually any question at any time from any location, AskMeNow is the ultimate business resource for any business person on the road," he said.

But these bold claims have raised the eyebrows of skeptics who have tried to stump the services with a particularly tough line of questioning. The New York Times put AskMeNow on the spot with the poser: "Does Franklin Delano Roosevelt deserve credit for ending the Depression?'' It received "an extensive but noncommittal response ... beginning, 'President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal fought the Great Depression on a number of fronts.'''

In the UK, the AQA service seems to have attracted a more salacious line of inquiry, reporting a significant surge in sex-related questions shortly before 11 p.m.

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8) AUDIO/On the Media: Speech impediment [Emission radio avec transcription, cette fois-ci sur les dessins danois.]
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_021006_speech.html

SPEECH IMPEDIMENT
February 10, 2006

BOB GARFIELD: We're back with our special Middle East broadcast of On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield. The New York Press is an alternative weekly in New York City with a circulation of about 116,000 - not big by newspaper standards. But this week, the paper made big headlines when three of its top editors and a reporter abruptly quit after the owner refused to publish the infamous Danish Mohammed caricatures. In a statement, management said the images, quote, "were not critical for the editorial comment to have merit and only served to further fan the flame of a volatile situation." The same rationale has been invoked by most American news organizations this week. Only two major dailies and a few smaller papers have reprinted the images. But Tim Marchman, New York Press managing editor - make that former managing editor - says it wouldn't have been enough to simply describe the offensive cartoons.

TIM MARCHMAN: I think there are two reasons why not. First, I think that the reason most outlets have not run this is the threat of violence, and I think that there is an obligation for the press to run these images to show that violence will not carry a veto over images that run in Western newspapers. Secondarily, I think the press needs to run these images because of a very curious argument that I've heard, which is that the description of the images suffices because readers can go to the Internet to find the images. It's obscene for any newspaper man to say that, to say that a newspaper's coverage doesn't need to be substantially complete in its own right. It's farcical.

BOB GARFIELD: But is there no cartoon or caricature that would cross the line for you? I mean, where is your line where the issues of offensiveness trump that of, you know, delivery of news and information?

TIM MARCHMAN: I don't know where that line is. I'm a free speech absolutist, and I don't think that there is any image too grotesque or offensive to some people for it to be indefensible to run it.

BOB GARFIELD: Lynching cartoons? Holocaust cartoons?

TIM MARCHMAN: No. I absolutely support the right of newspapers to run these images. If those are met with criticisms from fellow members of the press, from the public, boycotts, you know, revocation of advertising dollars, that's entirely appropriate.

BOB GARFIELD: If Marchman's move was extreme, it was still in keeping with this country's basic journalistic values. But in Europe, where the cartoons originated, free speech absolutists have a harder time making their case. That's because in the aftermath of World War II many European nations passed laws banning racist speech, Holocaust denial and incitement, laws which set a precedent, says University of Michigan visiting law professor David Bernstein, a precedent for further restrictions down the road by other aggrieved groups.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Incitement basically means that you encourage people to engage in illegal acts. This was the case in England, actually, where an imam of a mosque was charged with incitement and convicted because he had urged his followers to kill specific groups that are not Muslims. In Europe, if you encourage people to commit violence and they do it, even if you can't trace the violence directly to the person who made the statement, you could be charged. Now in the United States, this would be protected by the First Amendment because unless you could show a very direct relationship between the speech - in other words, someone actually saying, "Get that person over there" - and the action, it would be protected. Hate speech basically is just defined as the kind of speech that will tend to lead people to want to engage in negative action against a minority group. So, if you public a controversial scientific study, say, on race and intelligence, that would not be considered hate speech unless it was your intent to try to denigrate the group that was shown to have lower intelligence.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, you have asserted - this is not settled law in the United States - that under the right political circumstances, the U.S. Congress could enact laws that do encroach on First Amendment rights. Tell me that scenario.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: It's a very fragile consensus that we have in the legal community in favor of strong protections for freedom of speech, and this consensus is only 50 years old, maybe. And we used to have rather strict libel laws in the United States that really inhibited people from saying nasty things. We used to have group libel laws even limiting what you could say about particular groups. We used to have blasphemy laws that prohibited taking the lord's name in vain. In this country, we don't have formal speech restrictions but we do, to some extent, allow political correctness to be codified in the law and required in the workplace and in schools - through university speech codes, even in state universities. There's a lot of controversy over that. Liberals who used to be the strongest supporters of freedom of speech have taken a step back, and a very large percentage of the law professors who teach constitutional law now believe that some sort of hate speech restrictions are constitutional. We haven't really seen this affecting the law so much because, first of all, we have a lot of Reagan and Bush appointees on the federal courts. Even with Bill Clinton, he was appointing people who went to law school in the '50s, '60s. I wonder what will happen, though, in 20 or 30 or 40 years if you have liberal Presidents in power and the next generation of lawyers making the law have grown up in an era where they're taught that we should have more restrictions on freedom of speech. But I think the Mohammed cartoon controversy shows the dangers of looking at things from only the alleged victim's perspective. Almost inevitably, someone's going to be offended by almost anything anyone can say that's critical. What we should be aiming for is a situation where we require people, basically, to tolerate things that offend them.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay. David, thank you very much.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: David Bernstein is author of You Can't Say That: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Anti-Discrimination Laws. The question of limits to free speech, what they should be and whether they should exist at all, has been a constant theme in the week's cartoon coverage, but in making this story mainly about free speech, do the American media end up casting the world's Muslims as freedom-hating fanatics? Middle East historian and blogger Juan Cole thinks so, and he says there's a better way of understanding what's going on. It's less about religion, he wrote this week in Salon, than about religious nationalism and the specific power struggles taking place in each country.

JUAN COLE: The story is the ways in which this controversy has been used within Middle Eastern societies. I think a lot of the more secular-minded and liberal groups have been the most vocal in denouncing the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed because it's an easy way of bolstering their own Islamic credentials, and it's cost-free. Look at who has been most vocal all along since last fall on these caricatures. It's been the Foreign Minister of Egypt, a representative of a secular military regime, which is, in fact, under a lot of pressure from the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. Or you look at - the most violent incidents were in the secular cities of Damascus and Beirut, not known for their Islamic fundamentalism.

BOB GARFIELD: Understood, but before we entirely dismiss the notion of widespread fanaticism, these incitements, cynical though they may have been, nonetheless, you know, got hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of Beirut chanting against Denmark and so forth. In other words, it wasn't hard for them to get traction. There must be something going on there.

JUAN COLE: Well yes, but the question is what exactly is going on? And one thing that should be underlined is that it's widely thought that the mere depiction of the Prophet Mohammed is somehow being objected to. I don't think most Muslims care too much if the Danes want to draw pictures of the Prophet Mohammed. And indeed, there's a famous issue of the French adventure magazine Tintin with the Prophet's picture on the front, and nobody ever made a big deal out of that. The issue is really more a kind of racist depiction of the Prophet Mohammed. Now, we in America don't have a strong sense of European colonialism, but most Muslim countries have been ruled for much of the last 200 years by Europeans. And while the Europeans were ruling places like Algeria, they weren't nice to Islam or Muslims. And they had a racist discourse about it. They depicted Semites as fanatical, as violent, as irrational, and therefore, as needing European rule. So, to take the Prophet Mohammed and to depict him with a large nose and a bomb in his turban, it's a continuation of those exact same anti-Semitic and racist themes that have been characteristic of European colonial discourse for 150 years. This is not something new, and people in the Middle East are tired of it.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, if it's true that this whole conflict has been portrayed in simplistic and maybe dangerous ways, who's most at fault? Is it the American media? Is it the Arab media? Is it the Arab politicians who have waved the cartoons, the real ones, [LAUGHS] and then fake ones as well, in the face of their constituencies? Clerics? Who?

JUAN COLE: Well, the entire episode has been full of demagoguery, and demagogues always feel that they benefit from these public displays. So everybody's seeing what they can get out of it. The American believers in a war on terror have another stick with which to beat Muslims. The Hizbullah in Southern Lebanon suddenly has an issue to mobilize people on the streets in Beirut. The Egyptian secular foreign minister now can boast of his Islamic credentials. A secular Pakistani party like the P.P.P. can denounce Denmark, but at the same time introduce a resolution to repeal Islamic law. So everybody's getting something out of this, which is why it's such a big hullabaloo.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, Juan. Well as always, thank you very much.

JUAN COLE: You're very welcome.

BOB GARFIELD: Juan Cole teaches Modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and blogs at Juancole.com.

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9) Seattle Times: Judge's order to chant "Go Seahawks" dismays some [Une juge décide de transformer une audience d'un procès en homicide en séance de supporters du Super Bowl.]
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/seahawks/2002788054_webjudge06.html

Judge's order to chant "Go Seahawks" dismays some

By The Associated Press

TACOMA, Wash. – A judge overseeing a manslaughter case embarrassed prosecutors and upset the victim's family when she called for a Super Bowl cheer for the Seattle Seahawks before the start of the sentencing hearing. As Judge Beverly G. Grant took the bench Friday, she asked everyone in court to say "Go Seahawks." Dissatisfied with the low volume of the response, she told them to try again.

Only then did she hear statements from prosecutors, defense lawyers and relatives of the slain Tino Patricelli, as well as an apology from defendant Steve Keo Teang, before resentencing Teang to 13 1/2 years in prison. "The tension was very high, and I thought it would be a way of people just thinking of something else and releasing it," Grant said afterward. "It was a diversion tactic to bring unison in the group."

Kathy Patricelli, stepmother of the 28-year-old man who was shot in a fight outside a tavern, said she didn't join in the cheers. "Super Bowl Sunday is Tino's one-year anniversary of the day he was murdered," she said. "I was a little tiny bit offended — well, a lot offended — because this was kind of an important day for us. Cheering for the Seahawks with Steve Teang in the room, I didn't think it was appropriate."

Pierce County Superior Court personnel were embarrassed, sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer and deputy prosecutor Sunni Y. Ko said. "One family is seeing a son go off to prison, and one family is here to find justice for their loved one who was murdered. It's important to them. Do you think they want to root for the Seahawks?" Ko said.

Grant said she didn't mean to offend anyone. "If the prosecutor and the others took it that way, as far as I'm concerned, it's trite," she said.

Teang, 24, of Federal Way, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Grant agreed to reconsider his sentence — originally 16 years and four months — after his relatives complained they were unable to attend a January sentencing because of lack of space in a small courtroom.

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10) Fox News: Maryland Lawmaker Demands Hand-Washing Units in Porta-Potties [Un député à l'assemblée du Maryland veut imposer l'installation de lavabos dans les WC portables.]
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183853,00.html
Md. Lawmaker Demands Hand-Washing Units in Porta-Potties

Sunday, February 05, 2006

By Chris Emery

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Portable toilets are a fact of life. And Maryland Delegate John G. Trueschler has nothing against them. "By the time you get to be an adult you have probably been in half a dozen portable toilets," Trueschler said.

What gets under his skin is not having a place to wash his hands. Trueschler, R-Baltimore County, coaches children's soccer on fields where portable toilets are often the only facilities. "You've got little kids playing soccer and they go to slap their teammates' high-five . . . then they all go get burgers," Trueschler said. "The people using these things should have some means of washing their hands."

To combat the grime, Trueschler has proposed legislation that would require all portable toilets in Maryland to include some kind of hand washing facility. He got the idea after using a waterless soap dispenser in a portable toilet at a soccer game. Afterwards he called toilet rental companies and was told that several types of hand washing facilities were available but not mandatory. He could not find any state or local health agencies that had regulations about washing facilities in portable toilets.

"It's embarrassing that we don't have any regulations in place," he said. Scientific research supports the common-sense message that Trueschler said he learned from his parents: washing your hands after using the bathroom and before eating helps prevent illness.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hand washing prevents colds and other more serious diseases such as hepatitis A, meningitis and infectious diarrhea. Yet CDC estimates that one in three people do not wash their hands after using the restroom.

"I'm not one to feel that you have to open doors with your elbows and cover your hands," said Stuart Levy, an expert on hand washing and antibiotic resistant bacteria at Tufts University. "But you should wash your hands whether you use a public bathroom or a private bathroom." Levy said there is no evidence that any one type of soap is better at killing germs. He said bar soap and alcohol-based liquid soaps work well. "Just a good sudsy soap and water, you don't need anything else in it," he said.

In fact, some researchers are concerned that certain types of antibacterial soaps might encourage the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Laboratory studies have shown thattriclosan — the active ingredient in many of these soaps — and other similar compounds have allowed resistant bacteria to develop, Levy said. But he does think the marketing of antibacterial soaps to the consumer market has made people more conscious of hand hygiene.

Trueschler said his proposal would leave the choice of what kind of soaps and facilities would be required up to the experts in Maryland's state health care agencies. If antibiotic soap is ill-advised, he said, a bar of soap and some water would suit him fine. "It's such a simple thing to do," he said.

There are an estimated 1.4 million portable toilets in use worldwide, according to Portable Sanitation Association International, an association of toilet rental companies.

People throwing special events like weddings or parties usually pay an extra $10 to $30 to get a washing facility, said William Venizelos, the owner of Cheryl's Chalets, a Glen Burnie, Md., rental company whose motto is "Where you go . . . we go!!" He said construction companies, one of the major users of portable toilets, rarely rent more than the basic toilet and often provide the bare minimum number of toilets for workers.

Venizelos said the industry recommends that construction sites be outfitted with one toilet per 10 workers, assuming a 40-hour work week. But Maryland follows federal regulations that require construction companies to provide only one toilet for every 20 workers. "Most of the contractors will try to get away with one," he said.

William Carroll, president of Portable Sanitation Association International, supports Trueschler's proposal. "Every time you go into your house you expect to be able to wash your hands," he said. "Why wouldn't we expect it for construction workers and the general public?"

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11) Slate/Moneybox: Indian steel and Egyptian cell phones [Comment réagir à l'OPA de Mittal sur Arcelor?]
http://www.slate.com/id/2136063/
moneybox/Commentary about business and finance.

Indian Steel and Egyptian Cell Phones: Do these products sound scary or great? Your answer says a lot about you.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, Feb. 13, 2006, at 6:20 PM ET

The recycling of global capital works in strange ways. Every day, the developed world sends dollars and euros to the developing world in exchange for commodities, natural resources, and manufactured goods. And every day, the cash makes a round trip as foreigners buy assets in the United States and Europe.

The good folks in the West are generally happy to sell real estate to nouveau riche Arabs and Asians. After all, cash-flush foreigners generally pay top dollar. In 2004, Lakshmi Mittal, the acquisitive Indian steel baron, dished out $128 million for a residence in London. (And few of the bienpensant clucked when Mittal rented out Versailles for his daughter's wedding.) There's no clash of cultures and civilizations when it comes to real estate. Would you like to buy Pebble Beach? How about Rockefeller Center?

But when the purchase involves a corporation that produces an essential industrial product, that we-are-the-world comity disappears. Since January, when Mittal announced a hostile bid for Luxembourg-based steel company Arcelor, the French and Luxembourgians (Luxembourgeoisie?) have reacted harshly. On Jan. 29, Arcelor's board rejected Mittal's offer as unacceptable in every way. Arcelor's Runyonesque CEO, Guy Dolle, has sniffed that his steel is "perfume" while Mittal's product is like "eau de cologne." Thierry Breton, France's finance minister, fretted over the potential clash of civilizations that would ensue if Mittal were to emerge victorious. (Never mind that Mittal's company has its headquarters in Rotterdam, is owned by a man whose primary residence is in London, and has steel-making operations in the United States and Germany—but not in India.) In response, India's minister of commerce and industry, Kamal Nath, flung back: "This is an era of globalization, cross-border investment and liberalization, not one in which investors are judged by the color of their skin." Touché!

Continue Article

There is, as Nath suggests, a fair amount of nativism at work in the opposition to some of these deals. It's fine if those foreigners with the strange names and cuisines want to buy industrial castoffs. Few in the United States cared when a Chinese firm bought IBM's personal-computer business, which could no longer compete with Dell. And nobody squawked when Mittal bought International Steel Group, which had been cobbled together from a bunch of bankrupt steel companies. But now that overseas industrialists are starting to buy the good stuff, there's concern. Orascom, the Egyptian wireless phone company, last year bought a big stake in Italy's Wind. As the Wall Street Journal noted, in 2005, "companies from the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and other regions spent more than $42 billion on deals" in Europe, more than twice the 2004 figure. Western government officials and corporate executives are generally skeptical about the ability of Indians to manage sophisticated global steel companies, or of Egyptians to manage sophisticated global wireless-phone companies, or of Gulf Arabs' ability to manage sophisticated global logistics companies.

This prejudice is misplaced, even stupid. The consolidators emerging out of India, the Middle East, and Latin America are far more cosmopolitan and savvy than their European and American counterparts. The managers and entrepreneurs behind companies like Mittal, or Mexico's cement giant Cemex, or Egypt's Orascom, are the best and brightest those countries have to offer. They are buying companies run by Europeans and Americans who are, in many cases, certainly not the best and the brightest. Otherwise, their firms wouldn't be in such poor shape that they might need a foreign bailout. Egyptian managers may not inspire confidence. But then again, Italy hasn't exactly been a paragon of business genius, what with Parmalat, Fiat, and various banking scandals.

Americans shouldn't get too smug about the Europeans' outrage. We exhibit the same bias when our interests are challenged. We saw a variant of the nativist investment strain when the Chinese oil company CNOOC was bidding on Unocal. (Although, as is the case with everything else, Americans tended to see the deal through the lens of national security, not culture.) Today, the shareholders of Britain's P&O, which controls port operations in Newark, Miami, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, accepted a takeover bid from Dubai's DP World. I'm sure it will give some pause that a company controlled by an Arab government will run operations at several key U.S. ports.

But perhaps it won't. Americans are, in general, blasé about foreign ownership of U.S. assets. Where would we be if foreigners wouldn't buy our debt, after all? And, in recent years, a series of acquisitions of prime U.S. assets by a group of people we consider to be unsophisticated in the ways of management—Europeans—have worked out quite well. Chrysler, which was acquired by Germany's Daimler several years ago, is clearly the best off of the U.S. automakers.

Besides, many of these foreign entrepreneurs aren't exactly strangers. Along with dollars and Hollywood movies, management education is a great American export. One of the objections raised by Europeans against Mittal is that he has elevated his son Aditya—an arrogant, 30-year-old Wharton graduate—as the heir apparent.

So, Mittal is willing to place his future in the hands of a young, hotheaded heir with an MBA and global ambitions? Who are we to judge?

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12) The Economist: Leather and canvas [Louis Vuitton mélange art et commerce dans sa boutique des Champs-Elysées.]
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5477983
Luxury goods: Leather and canvas

Feb 2nd 2006 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition
The art of marketing

IS A Louis Vuitton handbag a work of art? Bernard Arnault, boss of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) the world's biggest luxury-goods group, would like you to think so.

LVMH recently opened an art gallery on the seventh floor of its new flagship store on the Avenue des Champs Elysées. The inaugural exhibition features work by Vanessa Beecroft, a fashionable American artist. One of the exhibits involves large photographs of naked black and white women forming the Louis Vuitton letters. Another is a video of a tableau vivant of almost naked women posing like handbags on the shelves of the shop. Ms Beecroft insists that: “I am not being used to sell bags, but to clean up the conscience of a sophisticated brand that allows intellectual and revolutionary content to emerge.”

Yves Carcelle, chief executive of Louis Vuitton, also plays down the commercial aspects of the project. He says the idea is to “make contemporary art more accessible for many people.” But LVMH clearly also sees a marketing benefit to be gained from exhibiting serious contemporary art in the world's biggest Vuitton shop and its new “Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton”.

For the hordes of Japanese, Chinese and Russian tourists who snap up Louis Vuitton handbags, the brand's aura of quality and exclusivity may still be the big draw. But some marketing experts reckon that Europeans and Americans may now need a little extra lure—hence the attempt to link the brand to high art. “They want an additional experience, so companies hire celebrities as spokespeople for their brands, employ trendy artists to rejuvenate their design or invest in contemporary art,” says Claudia D'Arpizio, a luxury-goods expert at Bain, a consultancy, in Rome.

Louis Vuitton is the LVMH group's most successful brand and now accounts for about one-quarter of its €14 billion ($17 billion) annual sales and about one-third of its profits. Mr Arnault has not put a foot wrong with Louis Vuitton, since he took control of LVMH 15 years ago after one of the roughest takeover battles in French corporate history. He sacked ineffective managers and pushed creative directors to revitalise the brand. In 1998 he hired Marc Jacobs, an American designer mainly known for his grungy collections. Adapting quickly to Vuitton's more subdued style, he tripled the brand's offering by adding fashion to the traditional leather goods. In 2004 the company opened a giant store on New York's Fifth Avenue to celebrate its 150th anniversary.

The new Paris shop, which opened late last year, is already a big hit. Some 3,000-5,000 visitors come every day, the large majority of whom are tourists. It is one of the most-visited landmarks in Paris—right behind the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral. And it is making money when many flagship shops of luxury-goods firms are kept afloat only to gratify the egos of their owners, says Antoine Colonna, a luxury-goods analyst at Merrill Lynch.

The art gallery may increase the flow of visitors to the Paris shop. And the link between art and luxury-goods companies is likely only to strengthen. LVMH and its main rivals—Richemont, Gucci and Prada—are spending big chunks of their budget for corporate image building on cultural philanthropy. As cash-strapped museums in Europe gradually shed their remaining inhibitions about corporate sponsorship, luxury-goods firms have become financiers of blockbuster exhibitions such as the recent “Klimt, Schiele, Moser, Kokoschka” exhibition at the Grand Palais, which was financed by LVMH, and the Dada show at the Centre Pompidou, sponsored by Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR), the Gucci group's holding company. This month a big LVMH-backed retrospective of Pierre Bonnard's work will open in Paris.

Louis Vuitton has worked with individual artists in the past. Robert Wilson, an American set designer, and Switzerland's Ugo Rondinone created window displays for the shop. Mr Jacobs collaborated with trendy artists like Stephen Sprouse, Julie Verhoeven and Takashi Murakami to spruce up the company's traditional pattern and logo. A handbag designed by Mr Murakami became one of the brand's all-time bestsellers.

But even Louis Vuitton is treading carefully. The company has no plans to exhibit contemporary art in stores outside Paris. And at least one of the works in the Paris store will probably remain on permanent display: “Your Loss of Senses”, by Olafur Eliasson is a pitch-dark, “sensory-deprivation” lift connecting the shop and the top floor. The lift is meant to serve as a contrasting experience to the abundance in the shop. This is probably as subversive as a work of art on display at Louis Vuitton will ever get.

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Center for Monitoring of Indian Economy compiles data about Indian leasing volumes, which is carried as a part of India Leasing Yearbook published by the Association of Leasing and Financial Services Cos. The data compiled by the Center shows aggregate balance sheet value of leased and hired assets (though for balance sheet purposes, lease and hire-purchase transactions are distinguished, there is no material difference between the two - hence the volumes have been clubbed here) at about Rs. 261 billion (End March 1997). This is based on reporting by 226 companies, whereas the business, particularly hire-purchase, is spread amongst some 3000 large and small companies. Estimated outstanding business done by these firms is about Rs. 15 billion (at Rs. 5 million per such firm).

That apart, the data also excludes the massive annual volume of business by the Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC). IRFC is a hundred percent subsidiary of Indian Railways, and its leases are dedicated to the parent Railways only. Of late, almost entire floating stock acquisition by Railways is being acquired on lease from IRFC. The outstanding value of leases done by IRFC adds to about Rs. 120 billion.

Thus, the aggregate volume comes to about Rs. 396 billion, which is about USD 11 billion as per then-prevailing exchange rates.

USD 11 billion of outstanding volume cannot by itself give India a ranking in the London Financial Group data, since these rankings are based on incremental volume. However, a rough estimate of new business can be made from the above data (unfortunately, the Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy data do not give any idea of new leasing and hire-purchase volume). Supposing 30% of the outstanding business of last year was paid, and there was a 20% growth in net business (as can be seen from the Chart above), there was a 50% new business, over the volume outstanding at the beginning of the year. Relative to the business at the end of the year, the incremental volume should have been about 33% (50/150).

Therefore the annual leasing volume in India is estimated at about USD 3.67 billion, on a rough and conservative estimate.

In London Financial Group data, this should put India at 12-13th place, close to Hong Kong. This would also be the third largest market in Asia, next only to Japan and Korea.

The only infirmity in the above ranking is that the London Financial Group data are not as of March 1997 - that, however, should not seriously disrupt the ranking of India, because other Asian markets in 1996-7 period have generally registered a negative growth.

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Picard, a massive grocery chain that sells only frozen food, is Sedaris-approved. Since my French is really wretched and I’m still a bit on the skittish side myself when it comes to interactions that have the potential to become conversationally complicated (basically, any interaction with anyone at all), I appreciated Ira Glass’s description of Picard as a very clearly-marked store where the shopping was easy and straightforward. Plus, it just sounded too weird to pass up.

I checked out Picard.com and found that there was a branch just down the street from my apartment. Pretty much everything seems to be just down the street from my apartment, which is quite nice. The sign outside is stamped with a snowflake and says “Picard – Surgelés”. Had I not been alerted to the existence of Picard in advance, I probably would have assumed it was a surgical supply store. That’s just how great my French is. I ventured in, shyly murmuring “Bonjour” to the security guard, and grabbed a basket.

Imagine a cross between Trader Joe’s and an operating room, and you can come close to the experience of shopping at Picard. They sell the same kinds of ready-made, pseudo-gourmet foods that you might find at TJ’s, but without any of the folksy handwritten signs or colorful chalkboards. Instead, Picard resembles someone's vision of the future – all cold and white and silver, an empty expanse of a room filled with nothing more than row upon row of waist-high, top-loading freezers with plain white signs stating their contents. It was eerie.

The foods were a mix of Picard-brand and private-label items. Everything there is flash-frozen, a technology apparently invented by the American Clarence Birdseye in the ‘20s, but raised to the level of an art form by Les Établissements Picard in the 1960’s.

I’m not sure how much we use flash-freezing in the U.S. I know the chicken breasts I buy at Trader Joe’s are treated this way and thus defrost very quickly, but I don’t know how pervasive this process is. Either we don’t use it to the same extent that Picard does, or else we just choose not to freeze the same sorts of items.

At Picard, you can buy tiny boxes of frozen herbs. You can get every kind of fish imaginable, including cases of prawns that have tidily arranged in neat rows, feelers and eyes suspended in icy immobility. You can buy tiny cups layered with chocolate ice cream and chantilly, apple tarts, cassis sorbet. Pork chops, rack of lamb, cream of carrot soup, haricots verts in many sizes, gourmet pizzas. Prepared foods come in every shape and size; I picked up a bag of “New Orleans”-flavored chicken drummettes. The potato section was robust, and the choices put Ore-Ida to shame. My eyes locked upon a bag of sliced potatoes "confites dans la graisse de canard”. My French is poor, but I can recognize duck fat when I see it. Into my cart they went, along with a Flammekueche, or Alsatian bacon tart.

The verdict? The prepared foods of Picard are easy to cook, reasonably priced and so far, pretty tasty. My chicken bits (what the hell am I doing eating drummettes in Paris?) were sweet and rich, and didn’t dare rely upon any processed parts the way they might in the States. The potatoes were indulgent and seasoned nicely, and there was enough graisse de canard remaining in the pan afterwards for a few dips of the baguette.

Certainly Picard is not the type of place I imagined myself patronizing while living in Paris, but in a pinch it seems like an easy way to pick up some ready-made meals. And it’s fun sometimes to feel like you’re in the space-age future, n’est-ce pas?

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15) The Economist: The French judicial system [L'affaire d'Outreau met en cause la justice française.]
http://www.economist.com

The French judicial system
Exit Napoleon

Feb 9th 2006 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition
A miscarriage of justice calls an entire system into question

Reuters Burgaud under the spotlight

IT HAS been a landmark case in French judicial history in more ways than one. Since mid-January, a parliamentary inquiry has been studying one of the country's biggest post-war miscarriages of justice: how six innocent people, jailed for years in connection with a paedophile ring, were acquitted on appeal only last December, after it turned out that key evidence against them had been made up; and how seven other innocents spent months behind bars. The testimony of the acquitted has been televised live, gripping the public. This week, national TV channels cleared their schedules to broadcast the testimony of Fabrice Burgaud, the lead investigating judge in the case.

The affair began in 2000, when social workers suspected sexual abuse of children in Outreau, a suburb of Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France. The following year (when neighbouring Belgium was being rocked by the trial of a serial rapist and murderer, Marc Dutroux), a judicial investigation into a suspected paedophile ring was opened, led by Mr Burgaud. Some 20 children were identified as victims, including those of three of the couples charged.

At the trial, in 2004, the central evidence was testimony by one of the accused, Myriam Delay, as well as by various children. Seven of the 17 accused were acquitted, after serving months of pre-trial detention. Of the ten found guilty, only four—including Mrs Delay—remain behind bars today, six having been acquitted on appeal in December. The stories told by the acquitted on television have been devastating: marriages wrecked, children taken into care, jobs lost, reputations in tatters. An 18th accused committed suicide in prison in 2002. A nervous Mr Burgaud, meanwhile, said this week that he had done his job “in all honesty”.

France has been shaken by what has become known as l'affaire d'Outreau. President Jacques Chirac made an unprecedented apology to the acquitted. Already, in 2004, Dominique Perben, then justice minister, had apologised to the first group of innocents. At a time when an introspective France is feeling uncertain about itself in many other respects—about Europe, about globalisation, about Islam—its judicial system is now under the spotlight too.

Many questions are being raised. How could the case have been mounted on such flimsy evidence? Why were there no safeguards that could have stopped it from going as far as it did? Do France's investigating judges have too many wide-ranging powers? Are they given too much responsibility too young? (Mr Burgaud was 29 when he took on the Outreau case.) Should they act single-handedly in sensitive cases? Should suspects' access to the defence be strengthened? Should an investigating judge's right to put suspects under official investigation, and in provisional detention, be curtailed? Should the position itself be abolished?

Pascal Clément, the justice minister, has promised reforms after the parliamentary inquiry's final report is submitted, probably in May or June. But it is unclear how far he will go. Jean-François Burgelin, a retired top judge who has written widely about judicial reform, told Le Figaro this week that France needed to adopt elements of the “accusatorial” system—in which there are three distinct roles of prosecutor, defence and judge—but “without going all the way to Anglo-Saxon excess.” The French consider that the Anglo-American system is too costly to the state, and also that it discriminates against the poor. Even its critics, though, agree that France's judicial methods need to change. “The Napoleonic system”, declares Mr Burgelin, “has had its day.”